Putting on Kindness

"More than anything else, kindness is a way of life.  It is a way of living and walking through life.  It is a way of dealing with all that is -- our selves, our bodies, our dreams and goals, our neighbors, our competitors, our enemies, our air, our earth, our animals, our space, our time, and our very consciousness.  Do we treat all creation with kindness?  Isn't all creation holy and divine?"

~ Jean Maalouf

I wrote yesterday about "putting on kindness."  But how do we do that?  In thinking about it, I remembered a religious retreat in which I participated.  For an entire weekend, those who organized the retreat would treat the retreatants with all the love and kindness possible.  This ranged from carrying their things upon arrival to making their beds to making sure that all their needs were met.  There were smiles and hugs, and you could definitely feel the love.  So... how do we keep that going?  How can we respond with love instead of with impatience?  How do we try to see the best in others and not focus on the negatives of either people or situations?  I don't know how we do that all the time or even most of the time, but I think that the first step is deciding that putting on kindness is what we want to do.